FREMANTLE council’s latest strategy to attract tourists and visitors is an opportunity to let the state government know what the city is all about, and prompt it to progress more of the projects earmarked for the redeveloped port.
The Chook, council CEO Glen Dougall and Destination Marketing Working Group chair Linda Wayman bumped into each other near the city’s centrepiece Walyalup Koort development on Thursday, with Mr Dougall saying sometimes he’s not sure state departments really ‘get’ Fremantle or what the City’s trying to achieve.
“We tell them and we tell them, but…” Mr Dougall said.
Dovetails
The recent adoption of the council’s Destination Development Strategic Plan was a good opportunity to push Freo’s agenda, he said, while Ms Wayman says the plan dovetails well with the state’s own Future of Fremantle report released last week (“Port ‘innovation district’ flagged for Freo’s future,” Herald, July 15, 2023).
“Victoria Quay would be the absolute icing on the cake; to be able to turn the West End in particular into that world class visitor experience,” Ms Wayman said.
She’s wants to see some action on the $20 million the WA government set aside for preliminary works on the quay, saying tourists weren’t being left with a great impression.
• Linda Wayman chairs the city’s Destination Marketing Working Group: She’d love to see Victoria Quay and the West End thriving with better signage. Photo by Steve Grant
“There’s no proper wayfinding signage and there’s no portside experience; at the moment, of course, there’s a huge sinkhole in B-shed,” she said, adding the Rottnest ferry office was operating out of a transportable.
“At the moment it looks like Beirut in the ‘80s when you walk through there.”
Ms Wayman says the city’s signage generally is out of date and needs new “skinning”, as Fremantle has changed significantly since they were last installed, while little carries the current branding “This is Fremantle”.
The marketing plan picks up where the previous one stalled during Covid, with a report to council noting that This is Fremantle had been working well before the pandemic.
Day trip visitors to Freo had increased by 40,000 annually between 2018 and 2021, 750,000 people had been attracted to events in Fremantle and school holiday activities sponsored by the council had generated $4.5m for the local economy.
The branding earned the council a couple of gold medals, and a silver, at the WA Tourism Awards.
“In terms of destination marketing, that brand; that positioning of the city as a maritime city with spirit and soul, is forming the basis for a lot of thinking in the Future of Fremantle, which it should do, because that’s such a competitive advantage for the whole of WA,” Ms Wayman said.
The city has a lot of existing attractions that could be leveraged more effectively to build on the visitor experience, she says, with the council hoping to develop a closer connection with Rottnest to encourage day-trippers to the island to consider staying the night in the port city.
She also sees an opportunity to develop a connection between Rottnest, Fremantle Prison and Arthur Head, particularly with Fremantle’s bicentenary only a few years away.
“This area of the Roundhouse and Arthur Head needs to be done much better; there needs to be that interpretive element, as well as the infrastructure that it needs.
“It’s just gold waiting to happen in terms of a bigger experience, and that involves some confronting Aboriginal truth telling.
Courageous
“Fremantle is probably the most courageous in doing that.”
The marketing plan and the Future of Fremantle plan both draw heavily on the opportunities for Indigenous tourism, but Ms Wayman doesn’t see much need for a great investment in a cultural centre on the quay.
“The whole of Fremantle is an Aboriginal cultural centre, you don’t just want a building,” she said.
“International tourists, in fact, all tourists, all visitors have said when they come to Western Australia, they want an Aboriginal experience, and that’s 96 per cent, but only about 4 per cent go away, having had an Aboriginal experience.”
by STEVE GRANT